ABSTRACT

Purpose This study aims to explore the enabling mechanism of China-Kyrgyzstan co-established SEBUs in addressing fiscal shortage, rigid governance and education-industry disconnection of post-Soviet universities and reveal the internal logic of cross-border collaborative innovation between Chinese transnational education enterprises and Kyrgyz universities. Methodology. Taking Kyrgyzstan as the research object, the study integrated 2021-2025 China-Kyrgyzstan educational cooperation empirical data, constructed a dual structural equation model via SEM, combined case and comparative methods to analyze the impacts of China's innovative input and Kyrgyzstan's original model on local educational sustainable development, and verified the mediating effect of the "digitalization-localization-commercialization" three-dimensional operational mechanism by the Bootstrap method. Results The results show that the total effect of China's input on SEBU performance (β=0.625) is 2.1 times that of Kyrgyzstan's (β=0.297), confirming the significant positive enabling effect of China-Kyrgyzstan educational cooperation on post-Soviet university transformation. China's input features a "direct empowerment + mechanism-driven" dual-drive pattern with nearly equal direct and indirect effects, while Kyrgyzstan's input is highly dependent on the operational mechanism, with an 83.6% indirect effect ratio and an insignificant direct effect. The three-dimensional mechanism exerts a partial mediating role in China's input and a strong one in Kyrgyzstan's input; only through it can China's digital resource output and Kyrgyzstan's localization support be transformed into SEBUs' financial sustainability, talent cultivation and industrial service capabilities. Implications for research and practice This study enriches the theoretical research on post-Soviet university transformation and cross-border educational cooperation and provides practical references for the high-quality development of the Belt and Road Education Community and China's cooperation with other Central Asian countries.